My music is a luxury.

One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.

I was ready to quit music. It felt to me like music equalled death.

Music is a really great creative tool for me, for different roles.

I find the difference, for me, between having no money and having quite a bit is that the bills get bigger. And that’s it. The lifestyle doesn’t change.

I always felt like there was a certain standard of music that I had to do from the beginning, even when I didn’t have the recognition that I have now.

According to Lifetime, I don’t know anything about TV.

Speed, it seems to me, provides the one genuinely modern pleasure.

I made an album I’m very proud of, and that’s about it.

Disneyland is a show.

Here comes 40. I’m feeling my age and I’ve ordered the Ferrari. I’m going to get the whole mid-life crisis package.

All I really had was a suitcase and my drums. So I took them up to Seattle and hoped it would work.

Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something.

Polygamy: An endeavour to get more out of life than there is in it.

Every album, I make big records. I’m going to always make an anthem. That’s what I do.

I like the idea of a kind of eternal music, but I didn’t want it to be eternally repetitive, either. I wanted it to be eternally changing. So I developed two ideas in that way. ‚Discreet Music‘ was like that, and ‚Music for Airports.‘ What you hear on the recordings is a little part of one of those processes working itself out.

I think that by staying true to myself and making music from my heart, the blessings come.

The choicest pleasures of life lie within the ring of moderation.

Besides entertainment and action, I want to educate. You know, as a producer or director, we do have a responsibility to society.

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.

That I be not as those are who spend the day in complaining of headache and the night in drinking the wine which gives the headache!

There’s something about music that encourages people to want to know more about the person that made it, and where it was recorded, what year it was done, what they were listening to, and all this kind of stuff. There’s something that invites all this obsessive behavior.

Television sounded really different than the Ramones sounded really different than us sounded really different than Blondie sounded really different than the Sex Pistols.

I’ve never wanted to use my age as a gimmick, as something that would get me ahead of other people. I’ve wanted the music to do that.

I’ve started doing book reviews for Barnes & Noble! They saw that I did a lot of book reviews on the site, and they figured that it might not be a bad thing if they got me to do some for them as well. I gave them five categories I’d be interested in reviewing, from art to fiction to music.

I listen to my old records and I think, ‚How did I ever get on the radio?‘

You know, there are artists who are 35 and up that still make rap and that still works for them. I don’t know if I want to be that guy.

When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music. Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?

The world, as a rule, does not live on beaches and in country clubs.

I never intended for the Monster Ball to be a religious experience, it just became one.

I absolutely want to have a career where you make’em laugh and make’em cry. It’s all theater.

Philosophy is the highest music.

The jazz I love is sweet and pure with raw elements, which is exactly what the good hip-hop is doing now.

I think we’re about ready for a new feeling to enter music. I think that will come from the Arabic world.

This land is your land and this land is my land, sure, but the world is run by those that never listen to music anyway.

There is no such thing as fun for the whole family.

I became a beach bum.

I want to play a fireman and a spy. I want to learn special effects.

Doo-wop is special music to me because it’s so straightforward and melody-driven and captures emotions.

I think ‚Hail to the Chief‘ has a nice ring to it.

Don’t run if you can walk. Don’t walk if you can stand. Don’t stand if you can sit. Don’t sit if you can lie down.

I sent out a tweet, ‚Dancing with the Stars‘ should stop the jibber jabber. They shouldn’t make the departure of a dancer so tear jerky because nobody’s going to war.

I’ve made sure that in any situation and with any record label, I’m allowed to write my own music.

We were all on this ship in the sixties, our generation, a ship going to discover the New World. And the Beatles were in the crow’s nest of that ship.

Nothing feels better than going onstage and everybody is singing every word – and actually wanting to see you.

In my songs, I’m not saying something that’s never been said before. The have lyrics aren’t going to blow people away. It’s the emotion and the melody that drive it home.

If there’s not drama and negativity in my life, all my songs will be really wack and boring or something.

A good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence; or a good piece of music. Everybody can recognize it. They say, ‚Huh. It works. It makes sense.‘

In my normal life I’m a very unadventurous person.

My mother is a singer, my sisters all sing, my uncles are incredible singers and guitar players, so it’s just kind of been like my habitat.

I like being able to be on the inside of music, rather than on the outside listening to it.

Music is my shining light, my favorite thing in the world. T get me to stop doing it for one second would be difficult!

I saw MotoGP on TV first, before I saw F1 and other types of car racing. It’s what I got more into. It was cool, there was good, exciting racing.

It doesn’t bother me when people try to deconstruct my songs – because at least they’re looking at the lyrics, and paying attention to the way the story is told.

Sometimes you have the trends that’s not that cool. You may have certain artists portraying these trends and don’t really have that lifestyle, and then it gives off the wrong thing. And it becomes kinda corny after awhile. It’s really about keeping hip-hop original and pushing away the corniness in it.

Attention to health is life’s greatest hindrance.

I don’t have a need for speed. I’m not that guy.

Whatever I’m feeling, whatever I’m going through, whatever mood I’m in… If I’m feeling like dancing or clubbing, then it will be reflected in the music. If I’m feeling dark and vulnerable, then it will reflect in the music, too.

I think maybe people see bands and musicians as some sort of superhero unrealistic sport that happens in another dimension where it’s not real people and not real emotions. So, I grew up listening to Beatles records on my floor. That’s how I learned how to play guitar. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be a musician.

I don’t have time to stand around and listen to an 11-minute song.

If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that… I believe in what I do, and I’ll say it.